Question: 今日も今日とて

[romulosilva20059697]

So, I was reading something and I stumbled upon the following sentence:

今日も今日とて, 俺たちのデートはつづいている。
kyou mo kyou tote, oretachi no deeto wa tsudzuiteiru.

I'm confused about what's the meaning of "kyou mo kyou tote" in this context. I tried to look it up on the dictionary but I got nothing.

Do you guys know what would be a good approximation of this expression in english?

[thegooseking]

I've never encountered 今日も今日とて, but 日は一日とてない is an expression that means "Not a day goes by..."
So 今日は今日とてない might be "Today doesn't go by."
So 今日も今日とて might be the negative (er... positive) of that, with the も indicating 'again'.

"Today, another day goes by and our date continues"?

That sounds strange from my dating experience - usually they don't span multiple days - so I'm not sure if that would make sense. But that would be my guess. With emphasis on 'guess'.

Edit: Actually, that's complete nonsense. Now that I look at it more carefully, 日は一日とてない literally means "There is not even one day." So there is no sense of "go by". So 今日も今日とて would be more like, "Even today, again,". I think.

小狼

[romulosilva20059697]

Well, a quick search on the google.co.jp found this exact sentence many times, so I take that it means something.

What I figured about this sentence is that it would mean something like "today would be no different and our date continues." It somewhat resembles the meaning of what you described on your last edit.

I usually grasp the meaning of these expressions by analyzing the context, but this one is just weird.

[thegooseking]

That seems to be a good interpretation from what I can tell from looking up explanations of it (in Japanese; I couldn't find any explanations of it in English). There does seem to be a sense of "nothing changes" in there, but it's very much "today, nothing has changed" - it's not ruling out the possibility that things will change tomorrow!

I'm not certain if it sounds positive or negative. One part of an explanation I didn't quite understand said something about hoping things would change tomorrow, perhaps indicating that the idea of nothing changing day after day is undesirable, but I don't know.

小狼

[Tracel]

I am taking a blind stab at this one as it seems to be a 'saying'. I also read through some of the Japanese explanations for what it means. Of course putting that Japanese into the translator is useless. Maybe if we had more context?

今日も今日とて, 俺たちのデートはつづいている。
kyou mo kyou tote, oretachi no deeto wa tsudzuiteiru.

Take today as it comes, our date continues (will continue).

[community.japanese]

romulosilva20059697-san, 小狼さん、トラさん、
こんにちは

wow....this is a difficult one
To be 100% honest with you, I've never used it personally.

It means, like romulosilva20059697-san interpreted, "nothing is changed" today comparing to
any other past days. So, "thing continue". This can be "good" or "bad" way.
You might have expected to be better, but things actually continue the same. Or, vice versa.

As a stand-alone sentence, 今日も今日とて、僕たちのデートは続いている。sounds like
"whatever the actual situation is, our dating (or date routines) have been continues as always/usual".
Somehow, it sounds a bit "negative" to me. Is there any context or background?


Natsuko (奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com